


A Survivor's Guilt

by theskyeskye



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, M/M, Post-Film, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-16
Updated: 2013-08-16
Packaged: 2017-12-23 15:57:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/928389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theskyeskye/pseuds/theskyeskye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Though the sound of the ocean could sometimes bring him from a nightmare, sweating, sharply breathing, on edge, waiting for a crash, waiting for a monster to tear through his peaceful existence, more often than not it was soothing. The gentle rock of the waves against the shore and the breeze that whispered through his wooden wind chimes brought him a sense of self that nothing else could anymore. He’d outlived many of the important people in his life, and some he didn’t realize were important until it was too late. His brother wasn’t the first to go, and he wasn’t the last either...</i>
</p><p>Raleigh can't sleep, which isn't surprising anymore. Not after all he's seen and all he's done. Grief is a constant lingering taste on the back of his tongue that he just can't get away from. Once more his thoughts wander to the things he wishes he could change, the things he didn't say and didn't do... And the person he didn't have a chance to love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Survivor's Guilt

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Brenda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brenda/gifts).



> After reading some beautifully well written pieces by Brenda, I was inspired. Which is why I gift this bit to her. All of my stuff is unbeta'd but I do try to catch all that I can. If you catch something I didn't feel free to tell me. 
> 
> So here is my meager contribution to this pairing. Let me know what you think.

Though the sound of the ocean could sometimes bring him from a nightmare, sweating, sharply breathing, on edge, waiting for a crash, waiting for a monster to tear through his peaceful existence, more often than not it was soothing. The gentle rock of the waves against the shore and the breeze that whispered through his wooden wind chimes brought him a sense of self that nothing else could anymore. He’d outlived many of the important people in his life, and some he didn’t realize were important until it was too late. His brother wasn’t the first to go, and he wasn’t the last either, though his voice stayed so prevalent in the forefront of his mind, even now, a year after the Breach had finally been closed, he could still hear it crystal clear.

_...Every life has meaning-- Every time we get into that Jager... Every life we save... It means something. We weren’t much before, but we’ve got a purpose now. A good one. So don’t get cocky, kid, they’re countin’ on us..._

The rustle of wind through the palms brushed across his porch and through the open glass doors to whisk across his bed and wake him in the darkest hours of the morning. No stars, low moon, and the sun hadn’t climbed its way up into the sky again. This time of morning was always cold, but in a way that was more comforting than unsettling. The crispness of ocean air across his clammy, sweat sheened skin bid him to wake. He sat up, muscles pulling and burning. They still remembered the beating they’d taken as they slowly recovered. All the time in the world wouldn’t make this pain go away.

He flexed his fingers and swung his legs over the edge of the bed to look at at the black waves crested with white crashing against the shoreline while he reached blindly for his brother’s ring. It was cold in his palm, cold like the breeze, cold like the ocean, cold like the black morning before dawn. If he stared at the navy horizon where it met the black waters and squinted for a moment he could convince himself that there was something there, floating in the distance. A sign of life.

He slid the cold metal down his finger and headed for the porch, slipping through the open door and breathing in the sweet salt air. He couldn’t feel at home without that smell. The spray of the water was like a lullaby, and he thought of how just months ago he’d been here with Mako. Her strong, slender fingers had brushed across his scarred knuckles and she’d looked at him, dark eyes reading the pain scrawled across his pages, clear as crystal. She knew him inside and out. That was what happened when you drifted, when you connected, and when that chemistry was so very _right_.

 _Mako_...

* * *

_“I am going to return to the service and assist with the Clean-Up project. Herc invited you as well, but I understand if you do not want to come,” Mako was so subtle and strong. She was plain and open with her words. Never fumbling, never darting around the topic at hand. She was honest, she was everything Raleigh needed in another person. Her solidarity and her fluidity made her tangible, something he could grasp with both hands and hold fast to without fear of sinking._

_But he couldn’t return to service._

_“You know that I don’t. Facing Herc. Facing everything... The memories are still too fresh,” Raleigh explained, smiling despite the heaviness of what he said. It was his great defense. Soft, sad, charming smiles were his go to when he wanted a subject left alone. She wouldn’t press, but then again, she didn’t need to. She already knew what darkness and grief Raleigh had stored up inside._

* * *

He could have waded into the ocean right then, further and further until his feet didn’t touch the sandy floor and the waves washed over his head. He could have let the current take him out to sea and suck him down below to join those who had been lost. Sometimes it felt as though he didn’t deserve to survive when so many close to him had not.

Yancy...

_“You love too hard, kid. Keep that up and you’ll wear your heart out.”_

Yancy wouldn’t have approved of this resigned guilt but Yancy didn’t have to watch the people he loved sink. He didn’t have to feel the fear of his brother as he died a painful death. He didn’t have the scars and the world weariness dragging across his skin like road maps, telling the story of where he’d been. He didn’t have to go to battle and see a young life snuffed out in its prime--

 ** _Chuck_**...

Raleigh flexed his toes in the sand at the shoreline, the water rushing up, a little wave lapping at his skin, chilly and jarring. Chuck had been that way. He’d been like a cold ocean wave on Raleigh’s healing wounds. He splashed over Raleigh and left him shivering. He was too young to have learned humility, too stuck in the life of a pilot to have ever known what kind of life he could have lead. He was too young to have loved and been loved by someone, intimately and wonderfully in the way only a lover can.

There was so much potential there that had simply been lost. It had been squandered and wasted and blown to pieces at the bottom of the sea and Raleigh was taking that death harder than he’d anticipated.

* * *

_“You’re thinking about him again. I can see it in your eyes,” Mako’s gaze was soft but intense as she peered at him there on the beach. The sunset lit Raleigh’s hair up, making it look like spun gold, and he knew when she looked at him, that she was in some part of her mind still admiring that. She wasn’t jealous. How could she be? What she shared with Raleigh and what Raleigh had shared with Chuck-- if you could call it sharing... Those things were too different._

_“There was nothing you could have done to save him, Raleigh,” Mako insisted, but Raleigh’s mind was racing and he had convinced himself the day the Breach closed that he could have-- He could have saved him. He could have taken his place. He could have flown, left Chuck to pilot with Mako-- Mako insisted that there was no way they could have drifted, she and Chuck wouldn’t have been compatible, but Raleigh would just shake his head. He knew better. He knew..._

_“It should have been different,” Raleigh said, staring out at the sea and wondering if Chuck cried at all. If he was able to really say goodbye. If he knew when he got into that Jager that he wouldn’t make it._

* * *

Raleigh sat down in the sand and dug his fingers in; he sifted the grains across his palm and thought about it again. He replayed every moment they’d spent together from the moment they met to the moment the payload had been detonated. He wondered if Chuck felt any pain or if he was proud of himself.

_It should have been different. It should have been me. He had so much to live for and what do I have? I thought... I thought I had a future but what kind of future is this? Without..._

Mako left because Raleigh couldn’t let go. Yes she had left to join the Clean-Up but had never expressed interest before she realized Raleigh wasn’t getting better. She knew that she had to get away from him. He knew it too. He only wished he could have moved on like her. He wished he could be as strong as she was, but it was hard to hold onto strength when you no longer had something to fight for. The Jagers were gone. The Kaiju were no longer a threat. Raleigh was left to his grief and...

 

* * *

 

_“You need help, Raleigh. It’s survivor’s guilt. You need to move on with your life. You may think by not letting go you are keeping their memories alive, but you are only hurting yourself. Yancy would not have wanted this--”_

_“Don’t pretend to know what Yancy would have wanted.”_

_“.... I’ve seen him. In your memories. I know. I know he wouldn’t have... And Chuck would not--”_

_“No. Mako **don’t.** ”_

_She retreated so quickly, Raleigh could practically feel a breeze surrounding her, a tunnel of wind marking her fleeing force._

* * *

As Raleigh laid back in the sand he let the memories flow, just like he did in the drift. Flashes of life so brief and so powerful filled him up until he was ready to burst. Smiles and birthdays and funerals and agonizing pain and elation and the knowledge of what it means to be alive (oh to be alive) all there in a fluid rush like a river. The waves rushed up around his legs but didn’t reach high enough to wash over him. He could have used a good cold wave right about now. A cold wave like Chuck.

* * *

_“Maybe I owe you an apology,” Chuck called after his back while Raleigh retreated, “maybe... you’re not as much of a washed up has been as I thought you were.”_

_There was an air of wryness to his voice, like he wasn’t sure if he was being serious or not as he spoke, but Raleigh could see through that cocky, nonchalance. He could see through it because he’d been a cocky shit once too. Aloof was easy, it protected you. Cocky was secure, it hid your true self. Some people were truly just that cocky, but others just hadn't learned that it wasn't a necessity of life. You didn't need jagged armor to feel safe. You needed someone to grab onto. So he turned around and looked at Chuck. He looked at him with welcoming and forgiveness, and a slight half smile. Those damnable, wide-split, charming smiles that made him seem so gentle, like he'd never seen any death, like he didn't feel any pain, and like he was a man untouched by the darkness in the world. Raleigh was light, and his smile was warmth._

_“You can apologize when this works and that breach is shut for good,” Raleigh offered in return, watching Chuck scoff and glance away, but the tight swallow didn’t escape Raleigh’s field of vision. He saw the tenseness in Chuck’s neck and knew immediately the fear that must have been coiling in the pit of Chuck’s stomach. Fear was a tricky thing, all part of the human experience. All that bravado Chuck put out was a smoke screen for what he really felt these days. We're living on borrowed time. We're running out of borrowed time. We're all on our last hurrah. This is it. This is the end..._

_“Yeah,” Chuck was uneasy and wet his lips with a stroke of his tongue, eyes meeting Raleigh’s with hesitance. Raleigh knew right then when their gazes met, he was not his own anymore. He belonged to that cold, cold wave._

_“Yeah,” Raleigh echoed, waiting a beat before, turning and slipping into his room, leaving the door open just enough for a body to slip in after him. He knew Chuck wasn't far behind._

* * *

Raleigh could have laid on the beach and just waited for the tide to come in but that kneejerk impulse in him made him sit up. There were things his body did he couldn't explain. Moments where he felt compelled and driven and out of his own control. He couldn’t. Not now... Not yet. The time for that had either passed, or it just hadn't come yet. He flexed his fingers in the sand again and looked out at the moon’s reflection on the rolling surface of the water. He closed his eyes and imagined that from down below, Chuck could see that pale moon too, and that it brought him comfort where he rested.

 

* * *

_There was heat in the opened mouthed kiss, but also that lingering fear. Chuck was hesitant, caught in the moment and the confusion of having spent his whole life ignoring his sexuality and all the complications it could bring to his already complicated life. Here, in Raleigh’s firm grasp, all his preconceived notions about himself were shattered, so quickly, so loudly, that Raleigh could practically hear them himself as they hit the floor and scattered away._

_“I never,” Chuck broke the kiss for two tiny words and then dove in again, because Raleigh’s hands against his back and the taste of his tongue were magnetic. Chuck was caught in their pull, (that cold ocean wave drawn in by the moon) but Raleigh understood. He understood and wasn’t going to deny him. This was their last chance. There was a very good chance they’d both die the next day and Raleigh was pretty sure that--_

_“Wait!” Chuck’s gasping plea, his groping hands, his wide and angry eyes, they startled Raleigh into halting. There was hesitation. Always this emotional hesitation. Chuck was struggling with the need to analyze what this meant, but they simply didn’t have time. So Raleigh cupped his cheek, his hand firm._

_“Whatever you want,” Raleigh answered, nice and easy, like a porch swing on a summer day. He was all embracing, all comforting, all homey-- Chuck remembered home. He remembered what made him feel at home. He remembered many things in that brief span of time while Raleigh waited for him._

_“Damn right,” Chuck tried to sound like himself, all arrogance and gruffness, but he’d matured past that in the last ten hours. When you stared death in the face so fully, when you saw the end of the human race on the horizon, it was hard to hold onto that trivial mess called "ego". They were so close to the edge, so close to death they both could feel it. All the posturing just didn’t matter anymore. Not in this private space. Not in these final moments._

_Chuck gave himself to Raleigh._

_And it would be the first and last time he gave himself to anyone._

* * *

Raleigh found his way back to his bed. He wasn’t sure how, exactly, but his feet retraced these steps so often they could find their own way. There was no confusion in them, no need for reassurance that their path was right, and no fear of stumbling or stepping astray. They knew the way, even if Raleigh had forgotten it, lost in something entirely different.

He found his way back to those sheets and tangled himself in them, letting them envelope him one more time in their soft comfort. And as he rolled over, eyes barely open, for just a moment he felt as though he wasn’t alone and that there was a warm, firm presence there beside him, welcoming him back to bed.


End file.
